Holi might be celebrated as the festival of colors with joy all across India. But for many women, the festival brings horrifying experiences and nightmares. This year, a student from Lady Shri Ram College of Delhi University took to social media to share a recent incident when she was hit with balloon filled with semen.

While returning in a rickshaw from a lunch in Amar Colony Market, the girl was hit with balloons. Taking the ‘bura na maano, Holi hai’phrase on its face value, this is probably not the first time somebody has been at the receiving end of hooliganism and sexual harassment under the facade of “celebrations”.

Her posts along with others’, now being circulated as shares on the Internet is an appalling story of how perpetrator flung balloons at them without even a tinge of shame.

It has created a wave of disbelief and horror on social media as people reacted furiously to it. This is not the first time such incident has happened and Pinjra Tod, autonomous collective protecting the rights of women students in DU along with the college administration, took to facebook to condemn the issue addressing harassment and abuse faced by women all over the country on the pretext of Bura Na Mano Holi hai.

After the post by the user, others are also sharing their story when they were at the receiving end of hooliganism where they were either mistreated, harassed, teased or bullied by random strangers hiding behind their phony mocks while shouting Bura na mano holi hai.

“My white kurta doesn’t invite you to throw balloons on me. A girl walking alone on road doesn’t invite you to wish her happy holi by touching her body. 3:58 pm I’m walking on road reading @t******* ‘s posts and thinking how horrible is that and exactly after that I feel a balloon hitting my back and just after some seconds I feel another on my feet. I literally couldn’t move after that and after a min I hear “HAPPY HOLI”. I couldn’t analyse what just happened, I felt so helpless. All the worst things were going in my mind. “What if they come back?” “ what should I do? Should I shout?” It’s high time that we all should speak about this and we should take a step against it. I don’t want anyone to feel the way I am feeling rn. Let’s stand against this. Let us tell them the right way. Throwing balloons of semen on women doesn’t prove your masculinity. It is a shame that we connect things like these to our festivals. The whole concept of “Bura na mano holi hai” should honestly get banned because YES we feel bad, disgusting when men like you come out on streets around holi.”